Children of the Sanctum
by Soldeed
Summary: How does the cult of the Sanctum persuade wealthy young people to join its ranks and sign over their whole lives to its service? And what secret does it keep hidden at its heart, secreted behind concrete walls and razor wire?
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: This is a Shalka-based story following on from The Honey Trap and its numerous predecessors. Don't worry, you don't need to have read any of the others to understand what's going on._

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The stately grounds of Hazelbrook Manor had changed little in three hundred years. The lawns, the fields, the woods, the rolling green hills beyond. Everything the eye could see was spread out under the proprietorial eye of the great house perched on the hillside, its stones mellowed by weather and age, its ancient leaded windows glinting in the sun.

The fortieth coach of the day crunched across the gravel towards the grand front door. The tourists had seen the lions and the monkeys out in the park, had bought ice creams at the café, and were relaxed and happy as they approached the final section of the tour. They filed out in good humour, accepting the barked instructions of their guide without demur, and were quickly shepherded up the polished marble steps to the entrance.

Inside, they spread out, those with a thirst for factual detail hurrying after the guide to benefit from her curt pronouncements on the history behind each room and item. The others wandered, lacking much idea of where they were or what they were looking for, but enjoying the ambience of velvet ropes, solemn paintings, old oak furniture and expensive-looking vases.

"Good day, good day, good day!"

The voice was a hearty, fruity sound, and issued from a portly gentleman with a bristling white moustache, the remains of his hair standing up in fluffy clumps on top of his head. He wore a pair of bright red trousers which seemed baggy on him despite his considerable girth and a loose green paisley shirt which hung down to his hips and was almost a smock. His face was red-cheeked, criss-crossed with visible arteries, and his eyes twinkled with unaffected good humour.

"Enjoying your visit, I hope? Don't miss the master bedroom, apparently Henry the Eighth once slept in that bed, which is more than I ever have, ha ha. Don't miss the eighteenth century water closet. Don't forget to spend lots of money in the gift shop."

The couple he had approached, apparently at random, gave him a wary look, but a moment later recognition lit up in the woman's face.

"Oh You're... Lord Hazelbrook?"

"I have that honour," he confirmed. "How do you do?"

He shook both their hands warmly and she fussed with the nervous excitement of this sudden close contact with the aristocracy, looking as though she'd like to curtsey but not quite sure how.

"Oh, your Lordship,"she gushed, "we've had such a lovely day here. You have a lovely home. The gardens, the flowers, the house..."

"I'm so glad," he beamed, patting her hand. "You know, one does enjoy the extra money from opening the place up, but the real reward is the pleasure so many people derive from sharing it with me."

Her husband, standing back from the conversation, took a more wary attitude, but at length felt the need to impress himself upon the scene.

"What's that other building?" he asked gruffly. "The modern one, behind the house. With the wall."

Hazelbrook disengaged his hand from the lady's grasp.

"Oh, I'm afraid that's the one and only part of the estate which must remain private," he explained genially. "As you may or may not know I run a little retreat there. A sort of self-help commune, you might say. And the residents do have to have their privacy."

"Oh," she said brightly. "What sort of things do you do there?"

"Yes, Lord Hazelbrook," a fresh voice cut sharply across them. "What sort of things to you get up to there?"

Hazelbrook turned to the newcomer, lifting his eyebrows with an air of surprise more than reproach at the curt interruption. He found himself looking up at a man six feet tall, whose ramrod posture and stiffly held chin made him look taller still. With close-cropped pale hair, a firm, muscular jaw and hard, dark little eyes set deep into his rough-cut features, it was instantly clear that he was no ordinary tourist.

"I'm afraid the precise details are confidential except to members of the group," Hazelbrook replied with an easy smile. "If you're hoping to join, I have to tell you that the entry process is a long and tortuous one."

"Yes, I'm aware that certain specific credentials are required," said the man, apparently oblivious to the smile. "That's why I've come to see you. Perhaps I should introduce myself."

He drew a leather wallet from the inner pocket of a plain brown overcoat and flipped it open to display the identity card inside. Hazelbrook read it with interest and then glanced up at the man's face with a little chuckle.

"Colonel Sebastian Stark," he said, his lips quirking up at the corners. "UNIT."

Stark snapped the wallet shut and put it away.

"We've come for a few words with you about this so-called commune of yours, Lord Hazelbrook," he said, his expression remaining hard and immobile. "Perhaps we might talk in private?"

"Um..." The lady tourist nudged her husband and spoke up with an apologetic smile. "Perhaps we should be getting on. It was lovely to meet you, my Lord."

Hazelbrook beamed at her and grasped her hand, bending to press a formal kiss upon it.

"Dear lady."

She simpered and hurried away, casting a nervous glance at Stark, who stood patiently waiting for her to depart out of earshot.

"Now then, your Lordship," the Colonel said. "Perhaps you could explain..."

"No." Hazelbrook held up a hand, his smile not dimming but unmistakeably hardening. "I've got a better idea, and it involves you leaving immediately and not coming back. You really shouldn't waste your time. Over the years I've had police inquiries, judicial inquiries, official inquiries, unofficial inquiries. I'm sure you know that none of them have uncovered evidence of illegality, so I really don't feel the need to cooperate with yet another inquiry by yet another government agency. I assume you paid to get in, in which case I'll ask you to enjoy the tour and then go without causing trouble."

"I'm afraid that won't wash," Stark replied, raising his voice just a fraction as it looked as though Hazelbrook might turn his back and depart. "This organisation of yours... what do you call it, the Children of the Sanctum? You've been on quite a recruiting drive this past year, haven't you? And some of your new members are not the sort of people who can disappear without drawing attention."

"As I'm sure you're well aware," replied Hazelbrook with heavy condescension, "no one has disappeared. In fact..."

"Adam Merryfield," Stark persisted. "Heir to the Merryfield hotel chain. Lady Sarah Lancaster, with her estate in Surrey. Derek West, the lottery winner. All young, wealthy people without any apparent previous interest in fringe religion or philosophy. All suddenly announced they were selling everything they had and coming to live with you here."

"I really don't know what you expect me to say." Hazelbrook spread his arms expansively. "These people came here, like many others, because I offer them a purpose in life which was lacking before. I've helped them."

"You've also taken their money."

Hazelbrook shrugged.

"I have expenses. They were happy to help. And now, if there is nothing else..."

"Just a moment. I'd like to introduce my scientific advisor."

The Colonel glanced back over his shoulder, picked out the person he was looking for from the browsing tourists, and raised his voice so that he could be heard.

"Doctor?"

Hazelbrook sucked in a breath and mustered a smile as he waited to greet the new arrival. Slipping between two pairs of harassed parents dragging reluctant children on to the next piece of historic furniture came a slender bespectacled woman in her late twenties, blonde hair drawn back tightly into a knot, lending some sharpness to her small, delicate features. A plain grey skirt suit suggested a librarian, but there was a purposeful certainty in the click of her heels on the floor.

"Good afternoon, Lord Hazelbrook," she said with a tight little smile. "I'm Doctor Angela Castle."

"Charmed," said Hazelbrook, responding with a broad and easy smile of his own. "And may I congratulate you on reaching the dizzy heights of UNIT scientific advisor so early in your career?"

"I'm fully qualified, I assure you," she said primly.

"I'm sure. But as I was telling the good Colonel here, there really is nothing here for UNIT to investigate. No one is here against their will, I've done nothing illegal, so..."

"Frankly," she said, her cool, crystal-clear voice interrupting him effortlessly, "I'm less interested in the rich wastrels whose pockets you've been emptying than in some of your lower profile recruits. Technicians. Scientists. Not the bored, pampered youngsters one would expect to fall for your patter."

"Once again, then," sighed Hazelbrook, rolling his eyes. "No one has fallen for anything. To the scientists, like the others, I offer something they don't get in the outside world."

"And what's that?" she asked. "What exactly goes on behind the walls of that ugly concrete compound of yours? How do you keep them penned up in there?"

Hazelbrook simply grunted his amusement, shaking his head.

"And so it goes on. You ask your questions over and over again, and all I can do is keep pointing out that they came here of their own free will. You doubt my word, ask them."

"I intend to," said Stark.

"Mm. Good luck with that. In the meantime, I'll bid you good day."

With an amiable nod, the portly, shabbily dressed aristocrat turned his back on them with an air of finality and strolled from the room. The two UNIT employees exchanged thoughtful looks.

"I dislike him already," she said.

Stark allowed his grim little smile to show.

"No argument with that, but he seems more confident than I'd like." With fierce concentration he eyed the door through which Hazelbrook had departed for a few seconds before speaking again. "I think we've learned all we're going to today. We'll try doorstepping him at the compound tomorrow."

She didn't object, and followed him from the mansion, her eyes drawn as they left to the bulbous mass of concrete which loomed amongst the trees on the hill. Its walls rose forty feet high, surrounded by a lower perimeter wall, and it was surmounted by a great dome, also in concrete, a windowless mass of clashing grey against the skyline. However willing its occupants might seem, it was hard to see it as anything but a prison.

* * *

Eleven miles drive to town, dinner, discussion, planning. It was past eleven when Angela got back to her hotel room, kicking off her shoes with nothing on her mind but to fall face first onto the big soft, bed. She was halfway through unbuttoning her shirt when she realised that sitting cross-legged on her bed was a man.

He had her laptop open on the duvet in front of him. He had somehow got himself logged in and his fingers were stabbing nimbly at the keys, the dim blue light of the screen illuminating a long, narrow, pale-skinned face with a scornfully twisted mouth and pinched nose, surmounted by a thick shock of jet black white-streaked hair swept back from his brow.

He looked up, having apparently become aware of her presence just a second after she saw him, and he reared up furiously, his eyes flaring with a chilly hostile light.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you doing in here?"

It was snapped out with such rock solid self confidence that she actually took an apologetic step back before collecting herself. She jammed her fists onto her hips and riposted resentfully:

"It's my room!"

"Oh." He gave her a suspicious glare but returned to work on her laptop. "All right, then."


	2. Chapter 2

Angela stood at her bedroom door and watched the strange intruder tapping away at the keys of her laptop, his self-assurance so absolute that it took her a few moments to raise the indignation to do anything about it. She was about to tell him to get his hands off her property and get out when he gave the keyboard an ill-tempered cuff with the back of his hand and looked up at her resentfully.

"There's nothing here. It's all trivia about trust funds and academic backgrounds. I thought you were supposed to be investigating what's going on."

She stared at him in disbelief.

"Who _are_ you?"

He gave her an arch look, derision oozing from every pore.

"Believe it or not, I used to have your job. I can see things have gone downhill since I left. Now look."

He tugged a battered rolled up newspaper from his coat pocket and tossed it down to the end of the bed so that it fell open in front of her. Sliding off the bed and stalking over to her side, he jabbed a finger down at the front page photograph.

"What about this? Haven't you learned anything about the real mystery here?"

She followed his pointing finger and looked at the fuzzy image with its accompanying headline.

"Hazelbrook Phantom photographed by tourist."

She looked up at his face to see if he was laughing. He wasn't.

"This is it?" Her voice rose. "This is why you broke into my room and went through my files? A blurred picture of a white blob?"

He drew back, looking outraged as though by a tasteless joke.

"Blurred? Blurred? What's the picture quality got to do with it? Read the article A dozen sightings in as many months. We're talking about a mythical ghost, something that a few years ago hardly anyone claimed to have seen with their own eyes. Suddenly..."

"I am not concerned with ghost stories," said Angela, tautly angry. "This is a serious investigation, I'm concerned with naive young people being seduced into Hazelbrook's cult, their fortunes stolen, their talents exploited..."

"So am I " he snapped back. "But those issues are background to what's really going on. Haven't you asked yourself why Hazelbrook needs funds running into millions of pounds and world-class scientific expertise? Haven't you asked why the expansion of his organisation coincides with an increase in supernatural phenomena?"

Angela wasn't about to back down. Her glasses caught the lamplight and glinted like fire.

"This is absurd. Hazelbrook is a power-grabbing crook, but he's not any sort of wizard. He's not raising demons to walk the earth. I'm not going to listen to any more of this."

He glared at her, nostrils flaring from his quickened breathing, then after a few seconds snatched up the paper from the bed.

"I should have known better than to expect you to listen. I'd hoped UNIT would have hired a scientist with a little imagination to fill my shoes."

Angela nodded grimly.

"I know who you are now. It's obvious, I've read your file. You're the Doctor, aren't you?"

He gave her a frosty look.

"So you've guessed my name. What do you want, a biscuit?"

Angela threw her head back and set her glasses straight with a precise touch of her fingertips.

"Things have changed at UNIT since your day, Doctor. We are a well-trained, experienced organisation. We deal in facts not fantasies and we don't need some rootless amateur to tell us what to do. We're led by a professional and not some mustachioed military buffoon."

He had been starting to turn away from her with a dismissive shrug, but at her last words he wheeled back round, eyebrows flaring, lips tightly pinched.

"Let me make one thing absolutely clear," he said, his voice soft and level. "Nobody but me gets to be rude about Lethbridge-Stewart."

It sounded like a joke, and she was on the point of throwing it right back at him. But she took a second look at his face and was jolted weightily to a halt by the realisation that this was the most serious thing he had said to her so far.

"Um..."

That was a weak response, and she was sure she hadn't used that word in years. To her annoyance, though, she realised that she actually was going to apologise to him.

"Okay, I'm sorry. I know you two were old friends."

He looked at her with a stubborn ill-humour, but the hardness left his expression.

"I did meet him once," she offered. "General Lethbridge-Stewart. I met him at the party for UNIT's fortieth anniversary."

Some animation sparked in the Doctor's chilly countenance.

"How is he?"

"Well..." She dropped her eyes, embarrassed. "I didn't really get to chat to him. Just said hello when we were introduced."

He shrugged, turning towards the door.

"Too bad."

Angela watched this strange, outdated figure walking out into the hall. A name from a file. From a heap of improbable reports with a noticeable shortage of hard evidence to back them up. Some of UNIT's younger members considered him to be a myth. Nothing but old soldiers' stories from the organisation's ramshackle early years, and yet here he was. She followed him as far as the door and called after his lean, black-garbed figure as he headed away down the passage.

"Where are you going?"

He turned, but kept on backing towards the stairs. There was a twist to his lips of something approaching humour.

"Ghost-hunting. Want to come?"

"Of course I don't want to come!"

He turned his back on her again.

"Your loss. Have a lovely evening reading the case files."

She fumed and pursued him down the hall, catching up with him at the head of the grand staircase which led down to the lobby.

"This is how you did things in the old days was it?" she demanded. "Your idea of an investigation was to wander round the streets in the middle of the night hoping something weird would happen."

"When the matter being investigated was a weird thing in the night... Yes, this is how we did it. What's wrong with that? You'd rather investigate unexplained phenomena from the comfort of your office and the convenience of a computer screen? And incidentally, there's no need to dress the part for my benefit."

Angela had been drawing breath for an acid riposte, but she tripped over the non-sequitur of his last sentence.

"Dress the... what?"

One hand resting on the balustrade, he looked at her like an impatient schoolmaster.

"It's obvious to anyone with half an eye that you don't need to wear spectacles, your lenses are window glass. And while there may well be men who think you're too pretty to be clever, there's no need to wear a disguise with me."

She hesitated, her fingers instinctively rising to her glasses. He was right of course. She was bitterly self-conscious of the girlish appearance of her large, blue eyes and had long since found herself more comfortable behind these steel and glass screens. She lowered her hand and realised the Doctor was already bounding off down the stairs. He was almost at the bottom before he seemed to remember something and glanced back.

"You're sure you don't want to come?"

Go trotting after him like a schoolgirl? She took satisfaction from the proof that he didn't understand her as well as he thought.

"If you catch a ghost, I have Scooby Doo's mobile number," she said loudly.

He have her such a thoughtful look that she wondered if he understood that was a joke. A little to her surprise he let her have the last word, stalking off across the foyer and out into the street.

Angela stood where she was and pondered the space where he had been for almost a minute before she remembered to go back to her room.


	3. Chapter 3

"So guess who broke into my room last night."

Colonel Stark, guiding the car along the A road back towards Hazelbrook Manor, gave enough of a start that for an instant the vehicle swerved alarmingly off course towards the ditch. He quickly regained control.

"Someone broke into your room? Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes." She waved that thought aside. "It wasn't one of Hazelbrook's people or anything like that. It was... wait for it... it was the Doctor."

Stark looked blank.

"What Doctor?"

"_The_ Doctor."

It took him a few more moments to get it, sitting waiting for her to explain, then his eyes widened and he drew in a sharp breath.

"You're not serious?"

Angela admired Colonel Stark. He was intelligent, knowledgeable, and blended authority with respect and consideration for his subordinates. It was with a sinking sense of unreality that she watched his face take on an expression not unlike that of a teenager catching a distant glimpse of a pop star. Caught between her and the need to keep watching the road, his head darted from side to side.

"What did he say?" he asked urgently. "Is he interested in this case? Is he going to help? Is he coming back?"

She sighed.

"Don't tell me you're a Doctor groupie?"

Stark, his temporary enthusiasm damped by her reaction, looked puzzled and a little aggrieved.

"What do you mean? You've read his file haven't you? The man has saved the Earth on at least seventeen separate occasions. The Cybermen, the Autons, the Zygons..."

"All reports based on very unreliable eyewitness accounts," said Angela firmly. "And on physical evidence which has since mysteriously vanished."

"You can't mean that. You're talking about a man who repeatedly changed his appearance and grew younger in front of people's eyes."

Angela waved this away dismissively.

"So he has some sort of rejuvenation ability. That's not unique, there are documented cases in the archives. And all right, let's say he did help out in UNIT's early days. It was a young organisation, it needed all the help it could get, but that's changed now."

Stark drove in silence for a few moments, frowning thoughtfully at the road ahead. Angela started to wonder if she had genuinely offended him, but she was unprepared for what he finally said:

"Doctor Castle, I hope you don't feel that your own position is under threat. I value your work too highly, whether the Doctor comes back or not."

"Under threat?" Angela drew herself up very straight in her seat and pursed her lips determinedly. "Colonel. I can assure you that it never for one minute occurred to me that my job might be in doubt due to the reappearance of a man who was well known for disappearing for months at a time without warning or explanation, sometimes spiriting UNIT personnel away with him. I'm just a little shocked at the awe in which you hold him. From what I've read he comes across mainly as a conjuror and a conman."

Stark glanced sideways at her with an air mainly of bemusement but also of genuine vexation. They were climbing the long, slow curve of the road up the hill towards the manor house and the concrete enclosure in the trees behind it. Angela watched the great grey bulk of the monstrous structure loom up over her, unable to suppress the slight tingle which ran up her spine, and then her eyes lit on something else.

She scowled.

"Oh, no."

As they pulled up by the perimeter entrance, a long, black-clad figure was visible lying in the grass by the gate, hands linked over his belly, eyes closed, a long stalk of grass protruding from his teeth. Only the occasional chewing motions of the Doctor's teeth showed that he was awake.

"And what time do you call this?" came his clipped tone as she swung open the car door. "You lot wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the Brigadier's day. He was a stickler for early starts, cold showers, and strong sweet tea. Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

Feeling the questioning glance Stark threw in her direction, Angela sighed but yielded to the inevitable.

"Colonel Sebastian Stark, Commanding Officer of UNIT," she said. "Colonel..." She cringed, hoping he wouldn't embarrass her. "... this is the Doctor."

Stark visibly took in a deep breath to cover his excitement, and held out a hand slowly.

"Doctor. An enormous pleasure and privilege. As you can imagine I've read and heard a great deal about you."

The Doctor unfolded himself from the ground, rolling up to his feet, and Angela saw his lips quirk together and his eyes gleam. She just knew he was about to make some sarcastic rejoinder, but then he seemed to soften and for a moment looked almost touched, or perhaps he just took pity on the man. He took the Colonel's hand solemnly.

"Thank you. Always nice to feel appreciated by someone."

"So," Angela broke in, "did you catch a ghost last night?"

"No," said the Doctor, retrieving his hand from the Colonel. "But as a scientist of sorts you should be aware that a negative result doesn't invalidate the experiment."

Angela narrowed her eyes but he tugged a fresh newspaper from his pocket and spread it out triumphantly to show them. There was a screaming headline splattered across the front page.

"Look " said the Doctor. "Another sighting, not a mile from where we stand. Some unfortunate lorry driver says a strange glowing mass invaded his cab and clung to him like glue. He says he suffered visions, nausea, panic..."

"For pity's sake " snapped Angela. "He was doped up on so many stimulants that he started seeing things, or else he's just some joker who realised he could get a few pounds from the paper for putting his name to this story. What kind of idiot would take this seriously?"

"You think this phenomenon is linked to Lord Hazelbrook and the Children of the Sanctum cult, Doctor?" asked Stark, taking the paper and scanning the details of the story.

Angela covered her eyes.

"I think it's highly likely," said the Doctor, clearly pleased at the attentive audience. "It's too much of a coincidence that the cult's activities and the incidence of sightings both increased at the same time."

"What's really a coincidence," Angela spoke up, glaring at him, "is that according to you this has been going on all this time without leaving a scrap of physical evidence, a single clear photograph, or two consistent eyewitness accounts."

Stark looked pained.

"Doctor Castle..."

"Stop calling me that!" She actually stamped her foot. "You call me Doctor, remember? You always have "

Even as she said it she knew she had gone too far. His boyish enthusiasm at meeting the celebrated Doctor had made her forget that Stark would not take being scolded by a subordinate. His hard little eyes tightened and his lips thinned. Unconsciously she straightened in expectation of the rebuke to come.

"Excuse me."

The Doctor's interruption was almost apologetic. He pointed at the heavy steel gates which blocked their way into the concrete enclosure, and at the flashing red warning light which had sparked into life.

"The door's opening."


	4. Chapter 4

The steel doors of the sanctum enclosure were like the gateway to a military fortress, rolling back into the walls on well-oiled wheels crushed down hard into their tracks. Angela moved forward, craning her neck the better to see her first view of the enclosure's interior, half expecting a desolate concrete wasteland, perhaps studded with faceless structures like the giant dome which towered over all. Instead, she saw a simple but well-tended stretch of lawn, beds of roses running in neat lines across an open expanse of dark green grass. As she watched, a young man in pale grey tunic and loose trousers came into view across the enclosure mowing the lawn. A second was visible circling a rosebush with an air of scientific investigation, secateurs at the ready. There was no other movement. There was no noise. The road continued a hundred yards from the gate until spreading into a broad semicircle of gravel at the front of the massive concrete blockhouse which squatted toad-like at the enclosure's centre. It was windowless, devoid of decoration, and almost featureless but for the extra slabs of concrete which buttressed its walls, increasing its structural rigidity beyond all reason

Angela, Stark and the Doctor walked slowly along the path, ignored by the gardeners, towards the small steel doors set deep into the front of the blockhouse. Stark glanced around at the surrounding perimeter walls, crowned by spools of lethal-looking razor wire stretching like claws at the sky.

"I've seen army bases with less security."

"With one obvious difference," said the Doctor, his own eyes fixed on the blockhouse doors ahead of them.

Stark looked at him inquiringly but Angela spoke up with a derisive sniff.

"He means the razor wire is angled inwards. It's to keep people in, not out. Don't encourage him, he's just showing off."

She sneaked a look back at the Doctor to see if he pouted at being robbed of the chance to show off. But he just gave a secretive little half smile and so she pressed on:

"I assume you've noticed it's not just razor wire?"

"Yes," he said immediately. "I assumed everyone had. Why do you ask?"

It wouldn't have mattered so much, but now Stark looked at her and she realised that she was going to have to explain it while the Doctor listened and looked for an opportunity to correct her.

"It's also electrified," she said unwillingly. "You can see the power packs half-hidden on top of the wall."

"Quite right," the Doctor patronised her. "But of course, it's not just any old electric fence is it?"

Angela tensed, and her eyes swept along the surrounding walls. What was he talking about? Or was he bluffing, perhaps? Was he trying to make her think that there was something she'd missed so that she'd panic and say something foolish? Or was he... Looking, looking, looking... with a wash of relief she saw it.

"The power packs are too large," she said. "Far larger than they have to be give a burglar a shock. Lethal, I'd say. In fact, lethal about ten times over."

"Exactly," the Doctor confirmed. "Well done, Angela."

She felt a moment's gratification at his words before realising that he'd tricked her again, by making her grateful for his approval like a schoolgirl. She fumed.

Stark eyed the pair of them as they arrived at the blockhouse doors.

"Is it going to be like this all day?"

They weren't required to answer because at that moment the doors slid apart and Hazelbrook stood there, his loose white shirt draped around his hips and over his paunch, his moustache bristling up as he smiled in welcome.

"Ah, Colonel, there you are. And Doctor Castle. A pleasure to see you again."

He was momentarily distracted by the pale-faced, black-garbed figure of the Doctor standing alongside them and eyeing him with intense concentration tinged with distaste. Hazelbrook's smile flickered by just a notch before returning.

"Ah, and who is this?"

The Doctor glared at him in silence for a moment before speaking.

"I'm a concerned member of the public."

Hazelbrook gave a little bob of his head.

"Isn't that nice?" He returned his attention to Stark and Angela. "Well now, perhaps you're wondering why I let you in after I made myself fairly clear yesterday that I wasn't planning on being cooperative."

"The thought had occurred to me," agreed Stark.

"Well, believe it or not, it's for Doctor Castle's sake. I've received a very complimentary character reference from a young man who is apparently an old friend of hers."

"A friend of mine?" Angela frowned. "What..."

"Angela "

She looked over Hazelbrook's shoulder and her eyes widened to see the young man striding towards her, his face alive with an honest and hearty pleasure at seeing her. Her mouth fell open.

"Max?" Her voice was a squeak of surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"You didn't hear?" He laughed. "Well, I don't suppose my parents were keen to spread the news around. I live here. I'm one of the Children of the Sanctum."

* * *

Led into a coldly functional reception area, all whitewashed walls and plastic chairs, Angela's mind span dazedly at this turn of events. Max Quinan. At university he had been her study partner, her academic rival, her friend and, for a period of three months, the love of her life. She stared at the simple uniform he now wore, almost like pyjamas with a plain T shirt visible under the tunic, the trousers loose, the shoes soft and flexible like slippers. He walked alongside Hazelbrook, sharing his smiles, exchanging easy chatter, as if they were the old friends and she the stranger.

"You can't be serious about this, Max," she burst out. "You've really signed up with this character? Don't tell me you've given him all your worldly goods too."

He shrugged and laughed, looking a little embarrassed, but in the most trivial and superficial way.

"Such as they were. I didn't have that much to offer compared to some of the other recruits. But I gave what I had."

"No one could ask more than that," Hazelbrook interjected with a comradely slap on Max's shoulder, receiving a shy grin in return.

Angela clutched her forehead.

"Why? Max, how could you fall for the nonsense he's peddling? What's he promised you?"

The smile dropped from his face, and his response was wide-eyed and earnest.

"I can't tell you that. It's a secret."

She snorted furiously.

"This is ridiculous You were supposed to be the sceptical one Don't you remember? You were the one who told me joining UNIT would kill my career."

"Mm." He nodded reminiscently and glanced over at Stark. "She was such the enthusiast while we were doing our PhDs. Extra-terrestrial life, paranormal phenomena, artificial intelligence... it all excited her a hell of a lot more than I ever did. Would you think it to look at her now? All grown up and sensible?"

Angela hunched her shoulders defensively, certain that the Doctor would not let that pass without some pointed remark. There was nothing. She was just warily uncurling when she saw a wrinkle of concern cross Hazelbrook's brow.

"Um... where's the other one gone?"

They all glanced around. Angela, Stark, Max and Hazelbrook stood in the centre of the reception room. Of the Doctor there was not a sign.


	5. Chapter 5

"Where is he?" The smile had comprehensively vanished from Hazelbrook's face, his features paling with anger as he turned on Colonel Stark. "This is completely unacceptable, this is private property and you are here by my permission, your people do not have the right to wander round exploring as they see fit."

Stark drew himself up to his superior height, glaring down at his shorter, rounder antagonist, but visibly reined himself in and responded with gruff courtesy.

"I'm aware of that, your Lordship, wherever the Doctor's gone it wasn't at my instigation. I assure you I have every intention of conducting this investigation in accordance with the law."

"I'm relieved to hear that! I'd regret the necessity to call the police and complain of trespassing and harassment. Now I suggest that we track down this Doctor fellow before he can cause any real trouble."

He led the way from the room, his bulky frame thumping along with short, angry strides. Max followed, subdued by the sudden chilling of the mood. Stark walked behind them with no expression in his narrow eyes. Angela was bringing up the rear when a hand tapped her on the shoulder.

She jumped, and whirled around. Large as life, the Doctor stood there, and for a crazed moment she thought the whole controversy of his disappearance had been an absurd error, that he'd been standing there all along and they'd somehow missed him. Seeing her about to demand an explanation, he raised a finger to his lips.

Angela was tempted to shout at him anyway, but with a quick glance behind her at the departing backs of the others, she controlled herself.

"What are you doing?" she whispered. "Where were you?"

He pointed a finger.

"Behind the chair. I don't think I could have slipped away without being seen anyway. Whatever stories you may have heard, I don't actually have magical powers."

Angela clenched her teeth, aware somewhere at the back of her mind that the proper thing to do would be to run after Colonel Stark and tell him the truth.

"I just can't believe you," she hissed. "The Colonel let you come along on this investigation and the first thing you do... the _first_ thing... is cause trouble for him. How could you do this?"

The Doctor dismissed the accusation with a flap of his hand.

"The Colonel won't learn anything doing it by the book. Do you think Hazelbrook doesn't have all his answers prepared and rehearsed? Our best chance of finding out what's happening is to take an unchaperoned snoop round."

He instantly stalked towards the closed door at the far end of the room. Angela hovered, torn between the alternatives which the two doors represented. The Doctor paused with his fingers on the handle and threw her an impatient look.

"Come on. Don't pretend you're going to scurry off and tell on me to Hazelbrook. Let's go."

There was a moment's conflict, but he was right of course. As much as she didn't want to get mixed up in this idiotic adventure, the idea of being the kind of well-behaved sneak who would go running to the teacher was even worse. She sighed grumpily and followed the Doctor.

"Fine. Perhaps I can keep you out of trouble."

"That's the spirit," he said, striding away. "Though you may find that's more difficult than you anticipate."

* * *

Down one concrete passageway after another, Angela hurried to keep up with the Doctor, whose long legs carried him along at deceptive speed. They passed an office and she expected him to suggest searching it, but she soon realised that what he was looking for was a way down. A steep flight of metal steps set deep into the wall led them into a half-lit area with a scent of damp in the air. His eyes scanned the heavy pipes clamped to the ceiling.

"Whatever they're doing in here, it's using a lot of power. Hence the deliveries by all those petrol tankers."

"How did you know about..." She rolled her eyes. "Right, of course. You found that out when you broke into my room and hacked into my laptop."

"Exactly," he said, apparently oblivious to her accusing tone. "So, a large private generator. Something to provide vastly more power than ordinary domestic voltage. Whatever it's powering, that's what we've got to get a look at."

He found a steel internal door in the far wall, got it open somehow, and led the way deeper into the building. Angela followed him, her mind following his reasoning at the same time.

"This thing that needs all the power... if you're right about that... it seems like they built this bomb-proof concrete bunker to house it."

"Mm." He nodded. "Discouraging thought, isn't it? A thing like this..." He slapped the rock-solid concrete wall with his palm. "... gets built out of fear. Whatever it is they're hiding, they're afraid of it. Afraid of its power."

She hesitated, still reluctant to talk about confidential information with him, but she was becoming resigned to the idea that he knew everything already.

"Hazelbrook's been buying a lot of expensive stuff lately..."

"High-tech hardware," he confirmed. "Heavy-duty cabling, blast shielding, and enough computer chips to run a mission to Mars. Another factor which doesn't engender happy thoughts."

"And his recruits," she went on. "Whatever he's doing he needs the rich ones to pay for it, and the scientists to build it and run it."

Following the route of the ceiling pipes down a shoulder-squeezing, barely-lit passage towards another steel door, the Doctor paused. He turned and gave her a strange smile which curved up one side of his face, the skin around his eye crinkling like paper.

"You see?" he said. "I knew you got it."

He strode on, and she let him lead her, struggling not to feel pleased with herself at the praise, if that was what it was. The room on the other side of the door was cramped and so criss-crossed with pipes and cables that there was barely space to slip between them. The sound of machinery which had been a faint hum out in the corridor rose to a roar which filled the confined space and hammered in her ears. She winced, and concentrated to hear what the Doctor, apparently unaffected by the sound, was saying.

"Look at this, Angela." Dimly she wondered how long he'd known her name. "We're obviously close to the generator. This here is modulating the power."

She followed him to the bank of dials and switches he was indicating, the readouts almost invisible in the half light. He continued to talk.

"What's interesting is that it's not just keeping the flow steady. It's constantly adjusting it in response to some other input. Isn't that interesting?"

She squinted closer, still having to strain her eyes to see the tiny dark numbers, her focus impeded by her unneeded spectacles. Eventually she lifted her hand, hesitated, lowered her hand again, then raised it and with an air of decision she snatched her glasses off. Blinking, feeling exposed, she gave the Doctor a suspicious glare.

"If you say I'm beautiful without my glasses I'll kill you."

He nodded equably.

"Fair enough."

She looked back at the dials and started to take in what they were showing her, but she had only seconds before she was interrupted. The pipe above her, shuddering with the force of the nearby engines, gleamed with a light beyond what the dim electric lamps in the room would provide. It shimmered silver-grey, and then began to bleed a substance into the air, something which shone and floated in ethereal wisps. A high-pitched hiss, almost beyond the range of the human ear, made Angela look up and she tensed to see the cloud of glowing matter building and gathering above her head. As she stared, it spread, and she felt suddenly short of breath, the blood pounding noisily in her ears, and within the silvery mass she saw something beyond the clouds, something growing and coming near. Something that could have been a face, screaming and wide-eyed, or a skull bleached of its flesh and yet alive and staring right back at her.


	6. Chapter 6

Angela felt her feet freeze like blocks of ice, the air lock in her throat, and every sinew in her body stretch taut. Her mind emptied and became a black hollow space with room for nothing but a voice screaming at her over and over: "It's coming! It's coming! It's coming!" She wanted to run, but she was rooted to the spot. Wanted to hide but she was stranded and exposed on an infinite flat plain. She saw the spider which had crawled onto her sleeping face as a child, its body a sickly yellow, its legs black claws. She saw the beloved dog run over by a truck before her eyes, its stomach burst, its blood spattering the road. She saw the boys who had taunted and pursued her, grown now to ogres, hair sprouting in tufts from their bloated faces, teeth yellow and crooked in their leering, slobbering mouths. She saw herself, as she had been when she joined UNIT after earning her doctorate, except in her vision she was a wide-eyed innocent child. She tried to scream a warning, but no sound came from her gaping mouth, and watched herself mistake the creature she met for an angel, when in reality it was a writhing, mud-coloured serpent, darting and biting at those around her. She saw them twist and die from its poison. The pain ran through Angela's bones, doubling and re-doubling beyond all reason. She would have dashed her head against a wall if she had been capable.

"Angela."

The Doctor's voice. She felt his hand pat her gently on the cheek and became conscious of his face inches from her own.

"Are you all right?"

There was a quickness, an urgency to his voice that she hadn't heard before. She opened her mouth to reply but was seized by such a wave of dizziness that she thought she was going to vomit and turned her head away from him. She managed to contain it and sucked in a deep breath before looking up.

They were back in the corridor. She was sitting sprawled against the concrete wall and the Doctor was squatting on the balls of his feet in front of her. His dark blue eyes searched her face and after a moment he looked reassured. He rolled back onto his heels and gave her a slight smile.

"Wasn't that interesting? Aren't you glad you came with me now?"

It took her a few moments to recover to the point where she could do more than stare at him glassily. She was certain he was poised and waiting for her to ask, "What was that, Doctor?" She refused to give him the satisfaction.

"I suppose you're going to tell me we've just been attacked by the Hazelbrook Phantom," she growled.

"I'm going to tell you that we've just encountered the phenomenon which has put the Hazelbrook Phantom up into the headlines of the local paper. What did you experience, Angela? Visions? Panic attacks? Nausea? Does that sound familiar?"

She shifted uncomfortably, still breathing deeply in an attempt to steady her churning stomach.

"You dragged me out here?"

"You're welcome," he said archly. She eyed him resentfully but had to admit to herself that she owed him for that.

"Okay, thanks," she said. He bobbed his head.

"Entirely welcome."

She straightened against the wall, drawing her knees up, collecting herself, reflecting back on the ordeal she had just been suffered.

"I saw things... memories, but like a nightmare." She gave him a suspicious look. "How come it didn't affect you?"

"Who said it didn't?"

His deep blue eyes were clear, but when she looked again she saw something else, like dark, lingering shadows behind that clarity. The Doctor gave a brittle, thin little smile.

"I don't know, perhaps there comes a point where you've had enough nightmares that they lose their power over you."

They were quiet for a moment, Angela gazing at the Doctor's pale, angular face, and it was strange... even though he had told her nothing she had the sense that he had shared something with her. She dropped her eyes to the floor and spoke softly:

"I saw a... a kind of twisted version of what happened when I first joined UNIT. I was... a silly kid, right out of university with my shiny new PhD and a lot of starry-eyed ideas about meeting aliens and uncovering ancient mysteries."

She hesitated, shooting him a sharp glance to see if he was about to tease her. But he just squatted there listening closely, with no sign of being about to interrupt, so she continued.

"It's true what Max said earlier, he tried to talk me out of joining. Said it was a waste of my talent, the death of my career, but I didn't listen. Soon enough, I was proved right, one of the first cases I worked on fulfilled everything I'd dreamed that working for UNIT would be about. A gentle alien stranded on our planet, alone and frightened. Dying from exposure to our atmosphere and bacteria. All it needed was access to our facilities, some raw materials, some high energy equipment. All stuff I could easily provide at UNIT HQ. But the soldiers I was working with were so obtuse, so suspicious, so slow. I ignored the regulations and decided to help on my own authority."

She rested her head back against the wall with a sigh, the events grinding to their inevitable conclusion for the thousandth time in her memory.

"The alien turned out not to be as peace-loving as advertised?" prompted the Doctor.

Angela shook her head with a bitter little smile.

"He wasn't an alien at all. It was all part of a corporate scam to get hold of secret technology... well, I won't bore you with the details. The point is, I was taken in by a few simple prosthetics, some conjuring tricks, and a lightshow. They'd identified me as the weak link in the team, the one who'd fall for the story, the one who'd bend the rules to help them. We got them in the end, but because of my mistake three of the soldiers were injured before we did it. One of them so badly he was invalided out of the army. All my fault, Doctor. By some miracle I wasn't fired."

She kept her eyes fixed on the floor, her arms wrapped tightly about her drawn-up knees, and scolded herself for the moment's weakness which had made her tell him all this. She'd told this story only a handful of times in the years which had passed, and the response had always been some platitude about how she'd done what she thought what was right, or about all that she'd achieved since.

The Doctor considered for a moment, head cocked to one side, but, she thought with gathering annoyance, not the expression of solemn sympathy she had come to expect. At last he said with simple directness:

"You made a mistake and you paid for it. Don't let it rule the rest of your life."

Angela scoffed, already regretting the impulse which had led her to tell him all this.

"Oh, of course. From now on every time I don't fall for your patter about ghosts and who knows what else it's going to be because I'm psychologically wounded. Why can't I learn to keep my mouth shut?"

The Doctor replied with a bemused shake of his head.

"You work for UNIT. You must know that aliens do exist. That there are things which human technology has yet to explain."

"Yes, I know that," she said impatiently. "That doesn't mean I have to leap for the fantastical explanation to everything. That's what I learned from what happened to me. Most of the time it's all just tricks and coincidences and hallucinations."

He was opening his mouth to reply, but a thunderous voice cut across him:

"Doctor Castle!"

They turned to see Hazelbrook storming towards them down the passageway, his face dark with anger and three white-garbed sanctum initiates in tow.


	7. Chapter 7

The UNIT trio made an inglorious exit from the Sanctum, with Hazelbrook snapping at their heels like an aggressive dog.

"I'm astonished, Colonel, astonished! You were guests on my property and your people entered restricted areas without my knowledge or permission. Is this the way UNIT runs its investigations? Do you think because I have offended some important people that I am outside the protection of the law? Let me assure you that my influence and contacts are extensive and I am well capable of making life extremely difficult for you. What were you thinking? What were you expecting to achieve with an illegal search of my premises?"

Stark's jaw was stiffly clenched, and he answered with a courtesy held in place only by an extreme exertion of will.

"I can only apologise again, your Lordship, and assure you that this breach of discipline will not be repeated. All UNIT investigations take place with due respect for national law."

Hazelbrook stood in the exit, glaring at them as they stood on the gravel outside, one hand gripping the heavy steel door. His baggy, careless clothing and elaborate moustache clashed incongruously with the iron fury in his face.

"You will hear more of this, Colonel. Depend on it."

The door slammed. Stark span on his heel and marched away along the track which led back to the main gate. Angela started to follow, but was distracted by the Doctor standing frowning up at the looming structure, apparently quite oblivious to the disgrace in which they had been ejected.

"We should have confronted him with what we saw," he said. "Just to gauge his reaction. I think I'll go back in."

"Doctor, this is not the time," she hissed. "Now come on, we have to go and be nice to Colonel Stark."

He glanced down at her, puzzled.

"What? Oh." He turned to look at Stark's stiff, fast-moving gait, and seemed to grasp for the first time the tension of the situation. "Yes. Yes, all right, let's go and be nice. I hope we don't get detention."

They caught up with Stark at the car. Angela felt a spiky prickle of nerves run up her spine at the way he kept his back to them while he unlocked the doors.

"Sir.."

"Doctor Castle." He turned sharply to face her, and she saw that his face was bloodless with suppressed anger. "I shall not speak to you about this now. I am shocked that you've jeopardised this investigation with this foolish adventure. May I remind you that UNIT is a military organisation and I expect discipline from my subordinates. More particularly, I expected better from you."

She shrivelled under his venom, but at the same time her sense of injustice flared up rebelliously. Stark idolised the Doctor and yet she was being flayed when her only mistake was to take the Doctor's advice.

"Well..."

She glanced sidelong at the Doctor and heard herself saying, "But Sir... it was his fault. It was all his idea. He led me astray, Sir."

She stayed silent. Stark's immobile features radiated cold scorn.

"As you know, Doctor Castle, I took a chance with you. I was advised to dismiss you but I felt that you had learned your lesson. This is the first time you've given me cause to regret that."

It was like a punch in the pit of her stomach. She couldn't have defended herself if she'd tried. Angela lowered her head and prepared to mumble an abject apology. The Doctor's voice, mild and yet steely, forestalled her.

"Colonel, I'm sure you're familiar with my long record of foolish adventures and insubordination. I don't feel that Doctor Castle should be taking all the blame here."

If Angela had hoped that the word of her mythical companion would drain Stark's anger then she would have been disappointed, but at least his attention was distracted. His rigidly controlled features turned to face the Doctor.

"Doctor, I'm prepared for the fact that you're inclined to be a loose cannon. Lethbridge-Stewart always considered your usefulness to outweigh your erratic methods and I'm inclined to agree with him. Aside from that, I could have explained your actions to Hazelbrook as being those of a civilian observer outside my control. Doctor Castle, on the other hand, is a member of UNIT. That means, firstly, that I am responsible for her actions, and secondly that I expect a higher standard of professionalism from her."

He turned his back on them, climbing into the car without another word. Angela hesitated, reluctant to sit alongside him and be conscious of his accusing glare for the whole return trip. She couldn't help hoping that the Doctor would step forward and grab the front seat, sparing her that experience.

The Doctor seemed distracted, eyeing the great steel doors which had slid shut behind them, and glancing up and down the road, into the trees, and down the hill towards the manor house. He bit his lip and then mused aloud:

"I think I'll hang around here for a bit." He pondered this resolution in silence for a moment, then glanced down at Angela. "Want to come?"

She almost choked on her own anger at his infuriating disregard for everything that had just occurred. For a moment she could only gesture wide-eyed at the car where Stark sat waiting.

"Of course I don't want to come!"

He frowned at her, then at Stark, then at last seemed to grasp the problem.

"Oh. Yes, of course." He looked at her curiously. "Do you really enjoy working for the military?"

"Yes," she snapped. "I love my job."

"Pleased to hear it," he said solemnly. "Then have a very enjoyable ride back to town."

She clenched her fists, knowing she should just turn her back with cold disdain and climb into the car with Stark, but unwilling to leave without some parting shot.

"You... you just don't get it, do you? You don't understand, or you just don't care, what you've done to me today. My career, my relationship with the Colonel..."

She had grown used to his indifferent acceptance of everything thrown at him so far. When his eyes started his wide, his eyebrows flaring up, his lips tightening, the shock made her recoil.

"I have done nothing to you! You are an adult, you make your own choices. You came with me because you wanted to. Now, if you don't want to come with me again then go with the Colonel and get back into his good books. But whatever you do don't blame anyone else for your decision."

After the Colonel's anger, it was too much. For a horrifying moment Angela believed she was going to cry. But with a steadying breath she lifted her chin and spoke to him with clear eyes and a level voice.

"Then the decison's an easy one. Goodbye, Doctor."

She refused to look round while they drove away. She didn't need to anyway, because she knew the Doctor was standing at the gates watching them go. 

* * *

Back at the hotel, she discussed with Stark what they had seen and experienced at the Sanctum. No further mention was made of her transgression, even when she described as best she could her exploration with the Doctor and the phantom and its effects. The Colonel was reserved and businesslike as he normally was, without the occasional flash of dry humour and warmth with which he had favoured her in the past. Even so, when she headed back to her room, drained as she was, her confidence in her ability to survive this and regain his respect was building. She unlocked the door so deep in thought that she was barely aware of her surroundings.

"Good evening, Doctor Castle."

She started back. Sitting on her bed was the portly figure of Lord Hazelbrook, a Sanctum initiate standing impassively alongside him.

"What... how did you get in here?" she managed.

"Oh, it wasn't that difficult," he said with an avuncular smile. "I own the hotel."

She sensed a presence behind her and glanced round to find two more tunic-clad initiates blocking her path back into the corridor.

"Don't be alarmed, Doctor Castle... or may I call you Angela? I hope that you and I will shortly be the best of friends." 


	8. Chapter 8

The Doctor strode commandingly into the dining room of the Hazelbrook Arms hotel the following morning, glancing around expectantly in search of one or both of the UNIT operatives. He found Colonel Stark sitting alone in the corner, the table spread with documents, his hard, muscular features set more rigid than ever as he stared at the sheet of paper in his hand. The Doctor strolled over.

"Morning, Colonel. Where's Angela? Not grounded in her room, I hope?"

The Colonel was unresponsive for a moment, then lifted his head with a jolt, staring at the Doctor as if he were an intruder with no right to be here. Wordlessly he held out the sheet of paper he had been reading and pushed it into the Doctor's hands.

"Dear Colonel Stark," the Doctor read. "It is with regret that I tender my... resignation from the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce."

His fingers stiffened about the paper and he read the rest in silence, his eyes tightening and his lips thinning. A second later, he looked up sharply at Stark.

"What's this? She's leaving UNIT? What happened last night? What did you say to her?"

"Nothing!" protested Stark, his parade ground bark rising above the note of defensiveness in his voice. "She apologised for the incident of yesterday, I said we'd discuss it when her six-monthly review came around but that for now the matter was closed. She was a little upset but not distraught."

The Doctor glared down at the paper as though trying to search out its secrets through sheer force of will.

"This is definitely her signature?" he asked. "Have you spoken to her?"

"Yes, it is," said Stark, submitting doggedly to the interrogation. "And no, I haven't. The letter was left for me at reception. She's checked out of the hotel."

The Doctor tossed the note down onto the table, his thin face hard with focus.

"I don't believe it. Even if she was having doubts I simply don't believe she'd walk out like this in the middle of this case. Hazelbrook is behind this."

"I'm inclined to agree, Doctor," said Stark with a nod. "I've had him under surveillance. Let's see what Sergeant Crombie has to say."

The Doctor turned to see another man, in civilian clothes but very obviously military from his stiffly held jaw and erect posture, marching across the room towards them. He was in his forties, greying around the edges, with a great square head and square body which suggested hard muscle packed too tightly into a given area.

"Good morning, Sir," he said, visibly having to control his instinct to boom it in a voice which would have alerted everyone in the building.

"Morning, Crombie," said Stark, unobtrusively throwing a half salute. "What do you have for us?"

Crombie retrieved a bulky brown envelope from an inside pocket before glancing suspiciously at the Doctor.

"It's all right, Crombie. The Doctor has security clearance."

"Very good, Sir."

He retrieved from the envelope a sheaf of 8x10 inch photographs and spread them over the table. Stark and the Doctor leaned forward, their heads almost touching, to run their eyes across them. The Doctor's long fingers quickly picked one out, drawing it from the others to lie on his side of the table. Though evidently taken at long range it showed clearly enough Angela's bespectacled, tidily coiffured figure dwarfed by the bulk of Hazelbrook and the three other initiates surrounding her. They were at the main gate of the sanctum, disembarking from a van, the great steel doors standing open for them.

The Doctor ran his eyes over the other pictures a second time and then looked up at Crombie.

"You took these?"

"Yes, Sir," replied Crombie with stiff formality.

The Doctor glanced back down at the photographs, then up again at Crombie.

"They're awfully good."

"Um..." Crombie's eyes flicked uncertainly towards Colonel Stark. "Thank you, Sir."

"This one." He tapped the picture of Angela with a fingertip. "Did she look to be under duress? Was she struggling, did they hold her or push her?"

"No, Sir." Crombie shook his heavy head. "That wasn't my impression."

"No." The Doctor pondered the photograph again. "Nor mine, from the picture. That's worrying."

"You'd prefer they'd dragged her out of the van bound and gagged?" asked Stark.

"Frankly, yes. That would be a much simpler situation, much easier to deal with."

He straightened briskly and cast a commanding eye across the other two men.

"Still, we'll soon see. Let's get down there, shall we?"

Stark hesitated, not rising from his seat.

"I think there's some doubt as to whether Hazelbrook will speak to us after the events of yesterday..."

"You have a missing person," the Doctor pronounced, "and evidence that she's on his property. He'll have to say something. Now come on, we're wasting time." 

* * *

Even the Doctor had been a little surprised when the Sanctum gates slid back for them even as they approached, allowing them to drive up to the front entrance of the concrete blockhouse within the enclosure. The three of them climbed warily from the car and approached the steel door. When they were within ten feet it swung open and Hazelbrook, glowing with self-congratulatory confidence, stood beaming at them, his moustaches bristling proudly outwards.

"Colonel Stark! Doctor! And you've brought another friend. I can't imagine what has granted me the good fortune of yet another visit from you."

Stark, accustomed to taking the lead, drew breath to reply, but the Doctor's quiet, thin voice forestalled him.

"No banter, Hazelbrook. Where is Angela Castle?"

Hazelbrook grunted with laughter, his eyes sinking deeper into the pudgy roundness of his face.

"Now, what makes you think I'd know the answer to that?"

The sun was shining down warmly on a pleasant spring day, and yet as the Doctor hunched his shoulders, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets, his face immobile and his skin almost white against the jet of his hair, there was a tactile sense of wintry chill felt by everyone around him. His voice was a serpentine whisper.

"Don't play games with me."

Even Hazelbrook's ever-present smile faltered for an instant, but was quickly restored.

"Now, now. Don't upset yourself. Just my little joke."

He turned back towards the interior of the building and stretched out an arm.

"Come along, my dear. Say hello to your friends."

She stepped into view in the doorway, allowing his meaty hand to settle on her shoulder. Stark and Crombie stared in disbelief while the Doctor watched in grim resignation the confirmation of what he had expected.

She wore the white tunic and loose trousers of an initiate of the Sanctum. Her glasses were gone, and her blonde hair fell loosely about her shoulders. She called to mind a solemn, serious-minded child answering the door in her pyjamas.

"Colonel... Doctor," she said. "Please don't make trouble for me. This is my home now." 


	9. Chapter 9

Hazelbrook's smile broadened to a grin of mocking triumph at the three stunned faces lined up in front of him. Colonel Stark, his expression a mixture of disbelief and outrage, was first to speak.

"Lord Hazelbrook, do you truly imagine we will let you get away with this? This woman is a member of UNIT. There is no question of leaving her here with you."

Hazelbrook made no move to speak. He seemed to know that Angela would do it for him.

"Colonel, I'm sure you got my letter. I'm no longer a member of UNIT. I'm not your responsibility any more."

Her voice was regretful, but defiant. She blinked, betraying some nervousness, but her eyes remained steady. Stark glared at her.

"Doctor Castle, come back to the hotel with us. Whatever pressure this man has placed you under, we will deal with it. Giving in to him is not the answer."

Angela merely shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Colonel. I'm not coming with you. Lord Hazelbrook has invited me to live here in the Sanctum and I've accepted. It's my choice."

The Doctor broke off his unwavering study of her face and spoke up:

"I just know you're about to explain what brought about this sudden change in your point of view."

Angela turned to face him. He didn't miss the slight tightening of Hazelbrook's hand on her shoulder, but she spoke with the simple sincerity of the true believer.

"Everything I've wanted all my life is here. I have purpose. I believe in what we're doing here. This is what I want to do."

"That is not an explanation," said the Doctor coldly. "Just what is it you're doing here?"

"That's a secret," she replied. "I can't tell you."

Hazelbrook beamed, hugging her protectively closer to him.

"Well spoken. Now why don't you go back to your work? I'll finish up here."

She paused in the doorway, seemed about to slip away without another word, then stopped.

"Goodbye, Doctor. It's been..." She seemed unable to finish the sentence, so looked away to Stark. "Goodbye, Colonel." She looked past him at the bulky figure of Crombie. "And you, Sergeant. Thank you for all the cups of tea."

"You're welcome, Miss," Crombie replied, and there was an unmistakeable catch in the soldier's voice.

Angela disappeared into the dimly lit interior of the sanctum. Hazelbrook moved into the centre of the doorway, blocking it with his body.

"So," he said affably, "if there is nothing else, I'm sure you'll be wanting to be on your way. Just to be clear, all three of you are now banned from my property. Harassing me is one thing, but I can't have you upsetting my new initiates."

Pale with anger, Stark ground out his reply from stiffened jaw muscles.

"This isn't over, Hazelbrook. I don't know what you've done to her, but I will find out. Whatever letters you make her sign, that woman is a member of UNIT, and I will not abandon her."

"Yes, yes." Hazelbrook waved a dismissive hand. "Very impressive. Now on your way, if you please, or I shall be forced to call the local constabulary."

Stark's lips twisted and for a moment he stood stock still, then spun round with a crunch on the gravel and marched back to the car, followed closely by Sergeant Crombie. Hazelbrook turned an inquiring eye on the Doctor, who remained just where he was, contemplating the man in the doorway as though planning on staying there for hours.

"In case there was some confusion," Hazelbrook said, "that included you, Doctor."

The Doctor didn't move, and took his time before speaking, his voice distant with thought.

"You're a clever man, aren't you Hazelbrook?"

Hazelbrook was startled enough to fall back into his habitual manner of bluff amiability.

"Oh, well I don't know about that, you know? I do my best."

The Doctor didn't smile or shift his expression in any way.

"But taking Angela was a stupid move. Stark would have played it by the book but he's out for your blood now. What made her worth that risk?"

Hazelbrook collected himself and his mind became unreadable, hidden behind his fixed smile and bristling moustache.

"Do you really need to ask me that, Doctor? Your dismay at losing her is clear enough. Why wouldn't I be keen to recruit her? Or perhaps it's not losing her that upsets you. More the fact that she rejected you and chose to follow me instead."

Anyone else would have shrivelled under the look of chilly disdain the Doctor turned on him. Hazelbrook continued smiling into the silence which followed, but his smile became more fixed with each second that passed. At last the Doctor seemed to lose interest in him and turned his back, wandering off towards where Stark and Crombie sat waiting in the car.

"I shan't threaten you, Lord Hazelbrook," he said over his shoulder. "I think it's implicit."

He didn't look round or say anything else, but Hazelbrook stood in the doorway and watched in an uncharacteristic contemplative silence as he climbed into the car and was driven away through the gate and out of sight down the hill. 

* * *

As they swept around around the foot of the hill, the Doctor twisted around on the back seat to ensure that they were hidden from view by the trees and then leaned forward to speak to Stark.

"All right, Colonel, let's talk. How serious were you when you said you weren't going to abandon her?"

Stark didn't reply immediately. He slowed the car to a halt and turned around, his hard face set firm.

"Believe me, Doctor, I was serious. I have a dozen men travelling up from London as we speak. Plenty to mount a raid on that place."

The Doctor paused, momentarily looking almost impressed.

"I may have misjudged you. You'd raid the sanctum without legal authority?"

Stark grimaced and gave a reluctant nod.

"Legal authority's the problem, yes. I'll have to call the minister and get his permission."

The Doctor sighed, sinking back into a pose of lethargic derision.

"And if you don't get it?" he asked sceptically.

"Well... then I'll go over his head. I'll get on to Geneva."

"Oh, super."

Scornfully the Doctor turned away from him and hurled open the car door. He scrambled out and began hiking back up the hill towards the trees which clustered around the sanctum walls. Stark leaned across the seat to shout after him.

"Doctor, if you're caught doing something illegal don't rely on me to help you."

"Seems I can't rely on you to help with anything." The Doctor tossed his reply back over his shoulder. "Do your thing, Colonel. Call the minister, get on to Geneva. I'm going to find Angela." 


	10. Chapter 10

As formidable as it appeared, the Sanctum hadn't been designed to repel an army. The trees gave the Doctor cover all the way up to the wall and he leaned with his back to it, his eyes on the swivelling CCTV cameras at the top, uncoiling the tow rope he had purloined from the forester's truck in a clearing in the wood. He knotted it firmly around the tyre iron he had found in the same vehicle and tilted his head back to survey the wicked array of razor wire along the top of the wall.

"I could have been Lord President of Gallifrey, but noooo..."

He swung the tyre iron up over his head on the end of its rope and felt it hook on the top of the wall. He gave it an experimental tug and gathered himself for the climb.

"I could have been head of cosmic analysis at the university by now..."

His words came between gasps as he dragged himself inch by inch up the rope, shoes scrabbling at the concrete, knuckles skinned where they scraped against it.

"But oh, no..." He grunted and scrabbled at the top of the wall. "I had to see the wonders of the universe, didn't I? I had to get out and get involved. Not for me a nice comfortable laboratory with... mmf... service droids attending to my every need."

He gulped in a breath, twining his ankles around the rope, and fished in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver, lifting it and poising it over the bulky mass of one of the electric fence's power packs. It took a matter of seconds before a vibration told him he had found the right frequency and he deactivated it as easily as clicking a switch. He pocketed the screwdriver and gathered himself for the effort of dragging his feet up onto the wall ready for a leap over the razor wire.

"If my metaphysical calculus class could see me now..." 

* * *

Limping a little from the landing, the Doctor made a swift but ungainly progress across the lawn, past the rosebushes to the Sanctum itself. As he had suspected, he had no difficulty in finding a pair of steel doors set into the base of the structure leading down into the basement. A heavy but simple lock yielded swiftly and he was sliding down the rails of a flight of steep concrete steps into darkness.

Storerooms, ventilation, fuel storage tanks. He slipped quickly past them all, stopping only to pick up a coil of heavy copper wire from an equipment locker. He hefted it thoughtfully in one hand as he pressed on deeper, his eyes on the ceiling pipes, finding his way along more by instinct than by memory till he was certain he was the area he and Angela had penetrated the previous day.

"Come on, then, I know you're around here somewhere."

He found a thick copper pipe earthed into the ground and twisted the wire around it, slowly winding it about his fingers and thumbs while his eyes searched the ceiling.

There was silence. Time passed but the Doctor didn't stir. He stood alone in the dark, the wire forming a gleaming cobweb around his body. An hour slipped away, the engines of the generator thrumming through the murky concrete passages. At last his eyes flicked sideways.

"Ah... there you are."

The silver-white glowing cloud collected at a corner of the floor, as though seeping up from the ground through cracks in the concrete. The Doctor's cold impassive face didn't flinch as it gathered and grew. His fingers tightened on the wire and he drew in a breath.

"Come and get me, then."

It reached for him like a fist, entwining him, encircling his throat, swirling at his nostrils, its light growing into a blueish spark, fizzing and popping against his unmoving body. The Doctor stood like a statue, at first with no sign that anything was amiss, and then the faintest twitch of his upper lip and the corner of his eye. The wire stretched taut between his hands and his knuckles whitened, but still he didn't stir. His eyes stared, and little by little started to gleam with moisture. His immobile face quivered, his cheeks becoming sunken as though the life was drying out of him. At last the cloud's glow started to fade and weaken as though punctured. Moment by moment its mass diminished and its grip on its intended victim slackened. It poured away to nothingness at the copper pipe on the end of the wire.

The Doctor let the breath he had been holding slide out with relief. He dabbed his index finger to the corner of one eye and inspected with an air of puzzlement the single glittering teardrop he found there. He flicked it away and dropped the wire to the floor.

"Water vapour contained by a static electrical charge. Thought so. Weren't expecting me to be earthed, were you?"

His enjoyment of his own self-satisfaction was interrupted by the clang of a metal door. He whirled, eyes wide and alert, to find Hazelbrook standing staring at him from across the room.

The Doctor craned his neck to look over the paunchy aristocrat's shoulder and see if he had any of his initiates backing him up, but there was no one. Hazelbrook didn't even seem angry at finding him there. His attention was focused on the copper pipe into which the electrical cloud had disappeared. His face was openly astonished, almost awestruck, as though some news he had just been told was too incredible and he was having to convince himself that it was really true.

He stared up at the Doctor and after a moment managed to form the words:

"You... killed it."

The Doctor glanced down at the pipe to confirm it.

"Looks that way."

Hazelbrook collected himself, and regained the calculation which habitually lurked behind his expression of bluff good cheer. He eyed the Doctor closely, and asked:

"Could you... kill a larger one?"


	11. Chapter 11

The Doctor and Hazelbrook walked side by side into the upper levels of the Sanctum. The Doctor didn't speak, his eyes narrow with thought, listening not just to everything Hazelbrook said, but the way he said it, working to sift the truth from the lies he was likely to be told.

"My father founded the Sanctum, back in 1968," Hazelbrook said. "You probably knew that, but you probably didn't know why."

They passed through a brightly lit computer room, two initiates standing at the upright control panels which stretched to the ceiling, a third typing at high speed at a terminal.

"I'm surprised, really, that no one ever made the connection with the meteorite. It was quite a story at the time, made the local papers and everything. A fiery ball scorching across the sky in the middle of the night. No one ever found where it landed, though."

A steel raised walkway led them through a humming rectangular chamber, banked on either side with row upon row of blinking lights and switches, a single initiate working her way along checking readouts. Hazelbrook looked sideways at the Doctor checking for a reaction but found none.

"Well, you've probably guessed, it landed here. In the trees behind the mansion, almost beneath where we're standing right now. My father and a group of servants ran up to see, worried about the trees catching fire more than anything else, but what they found was beyond anything they'd imagined. A silver and glass sphere, almost undamaged from the crash despite slamming into the earth at a thousand miles an hour, spitting electric sparks, its light dimming and reviving like a broken lamp.

"They'd barely time to get over that shock when something terrible started to happen. A glowing mist started to seep from the sphere. It reached out and wrapped itself around one of the men who'd accompanied my father, tormenting him with nightmare visions, sending him mad.

"My father could see that this sphere, whatever it was, was failing, and he guessed that whatever was inside was escaping and forming this mist. He had no idea what to do, of course, so he did the only thing he could think of which was to have a simple petrol generator brought up from the house and hooked up to what seemed to be the electrical circuits of the sphere.

"It seemed to work. The flickering stopped and no more mist emerged. The cloud which had attacked the man eventually flowed away down the hill and, as far as we know, dissipated. We never heard of it any more."

Hazelbrook hesitated at a heavy steel door, sealed airtight with a gleaming brand new combination lock. He gave the Doctor a wary look as though inviting him to provide a reason why he should be trusted. But the Doctor barely responded at all. His thin face was hard with athough, his dark blue eyes steady, his silence creating a vacuum which Hazelbrook was pressed to fill. He reached out a stiff hand and stabbed out the combination, conscious of the Doctor's gaze resting on his fingers as he did so, undoubtedly memorising the code.

"That wasn't the end of it of course. My father was... well, a bit of an old hippy. He didn't trust governments or the military, and he was afraid they would want to use the sphere, whatever it was, as a weapon. So he chose to hide it. He built a simple brick structure over the crater and a perimeter fence, and told everyone he'd started a sort of commune, which was easy to believe in those days. The hippy commune became a cult. The brick shelter became this concrete bunker, and when he died in 1979, I took on the responsibility which he had handed me."

They stepped out onto a high gantry which circled the inner curve of a vast concrete dome, looking down onto an ant's nest of bustling activity and glaring light fifty feet beneath where they stood. Great coils of heavy duty power cable twisted about the floor, winding their way around benches and desks loaded with computer equipment. A dozen initiates hunched over the screens, or clustered around the great glass sphere which dominated the centre of the room. It was translucent, like a giant pearl ten feet across, and bound with heavy silver girders which clutched it like an unbreakable fist. It was set into a pit so that it emerged only two or three feet above floor level and the cables converged upon it, hooking onto open panels in the girders so that it looked like a patient in intensive care. The Doctor leaned forward slowly, hands gripping the rail.

Hazelbrook paused, looking almost apologetic as his uncertainty of his own position grew.

"Of course... we don't really know what it is. We don't even know for sure that my father did the right thing."

"Mm."

For a moment it appeared that this would be the only response the Doctor would make, all his attention swallowed up by the glowing sphere in the pit below. But after a few more moments he glanced across at Hazelbrook, his face serious but clear.

"I think it's likely that your father saved the world." 

* * *

"I take it your power requirements have increased," the Doctor remarked, leading the way down a narrow metal staircase which twisted around the cylindrical chamber to the floor where the sphere lay. They passed by a pair of great insulated cables secured to the wall with brackets.

"Yes, we've found that as the years have gone by it's taken more and more electricity to keep the device stable," said Hazelbrook, hurrying along at his heels. "If we don't maintain a constant supply then the light starts to phase on and off and one of those cloud creatures starts to coalesce. I've had to install an industrial-sized generator in the basement... you've seen it of course... and that's not the worst of our problems."

"Yes?" prompted the Doctor, glancing back at him without pausing his downward progress.

"It seems to be reaching a point where no matter how much electricity we pump in, it doesn't maintain the sphere's integrity. It flickers on and off now and then even when the power is flowing full strength. I'm sure you're aware that the silver clouds have been appearing miles away, attacking people. I'm frightened that it's failing, and if it does then there'll be no stopping them."

"Hence your recruiting drive," the Doctor remarked briskly, reaching the foot of the steps and walking out across the concrete floor, stepping over one of many bulky cables winding towards the sphere.

"Yes. I'm trying to find a more permanent solution. For that, I need money, and I need skilled technical people. The situation's got bad enough that I had to throw caution to the winds and risk making some powerful enemies to get the people I needed. Fortunately there is no shortage of young people who are willing to devote themselves to the project once they find out the truth behind it."

"Such as..."

The Doctor halted, and the trace of a smile brushed across his lips at the sight of Angela, her back to them, clipboard in hand, taking readings from a device clamped to the side of the sphere. Hazelbrook saw where he was looking and gave a slightly embarrassed nod.

"Yes. I know it must have seemed that I'd kidnapped or hypnotised her, but as Max assured me, once she was told what we were doing, and was shown proof, she didn't hesitate."

"Of course," the Doctor said his eyes still resting upon her. "A chance to use her skills for something vital. To save the world. Why would she hesitate?"

At that instant Angela, as though physically feeling the eyes watching her, turned around and saw the Doctor. Though her glasses were discarded and her hair hung carelessly down her back, her expression on sighting the Doctor had changed not at all.

"Oh, no." She glared at him for a moment, then looked appealingly at Hazelbrook. "What's he doing here?"

The Doctor lifted his chin primly and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, fine. I suppose you don't want to know what this thing is that you're working on, then."

She visibly grimaced, but also straightened, her curiosity rising like a force outside her conscious control.

"You... know what it is?" she asked grudgingly.

The Doctor gave her a twisted little smile and let the point hang silently in the air for a moment, then answered with an airy wave of his hand.

"Of course I do. It's a form of particle wave psionic construct, often known colloquially as a mind vulture. You don't need me to tell you what it does, it attacks the subconscious mind, lifting the victim's fears to the surface, making them incapable of action. What you do need to know is that the phantoms you've seen wafting around the countryside are nothing. They're just little wisps of vapour that have escaped through the cracks." He planted a hand on the surface of the sphere and gazed through at the swirling, glimmering fog visible through the opalescent barrier. "If this thing ever got free, it would spread across the surface of the world and nothing would be able to stop it. The human race would die screaming."


	12. Chapter 12

There was silence in the great chamber at the heart of the Sanctum. All work had stopped, the initiates stood in a hushed circle, hanging on the Doctor's words like those of a prophet. Angela felt her mistrust and scepticism slipping away and she grappled to armour herself with them anew, but he seemed so sure, such a rock-hard beacon of certainty standing out like a sharp black column in the muted grey of the chamber. A thousand questions bubbled up inside her, and forcing them down seemed more futile with each passing second.

"Is it alive?" she asked.

The Doctor turned from the sphere to look at her thoughtfully.

"Alive? No, not really. Well, yes, in a way. Or no. No, not at all. It has a form of intelligence in the way that a computer does, it's not self-aware."

"Well, that's good," Hazelbrook spoke up. "It means there's no issue with killing it."

The Doctor gave a harsh little bark of laughter.

"No issue? Well, perhaps not, but that may not be an option we're given. Draining the power from one of its little phantoms was nothing. Those manifestations are not even the tip of one of this thing's fingernails. We wouldn't defeat it in the same way, it's designed to be more or less unstoppable."

"Designed?" queried Angela.

"Oh, yes." He glanced back at the sphere as if for confirmation, then back at her. "It's a weapon, for use in interplanetary war. It would be fired at an enemy planet, split open on impact, and more than likely wipe out the entire population. This is a genocide machine."

"Then this was an attack on Earth?"

"It's possible. But as the sphere is malfunctioning and there have been no more, I think it's more likely that it was fired at a different planet and went astray, or it was simply fired off into outer space as a way of getting rid of it and eventually found its way here. Either way, its makers have a lot to answer for."

Hazelbrook puffed his cheeks out and release a long rush of air as he assimilated all he had been told, ruffling his hand agitatedly back through his sparse white hair.

"Can you help us, Doctor?" he asked. "Can you help us keep it from escaping?"

The Doctor hunched his shoulders, tilting his head back to frown up at the domed ceiling, letting them all wait on his answer.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, I should think so." He glanced over at Angela. "If there are no objections of course."

She sighed, feeling like a single tree standing in the path of an avalanche, and held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. 

* * *

Angela sat cross-legged and talked to the Doctor's feet. They were sticking out from beneath a bank of computers in the central chamber from which, he claimed, he would be able to tune the sphere's forcefield with "a few simple adjustments".

"So you've seen things like this before?" she asked.

"Seen one? No."

"You've never seen one?" she exclaimed. "So what makes you think you can come in and sort out all our problems?"

"It's only a forcefield," came his sharply clipped tone. "No solid matter could contain a mind vulture, but forcefield technology can, and it's just not that complicated. We get it working properly, and we can all knock off early today."

"I was looking at that," she said grudgingly. "There isn't a major power source in the sphere, so my thinking was, the barrier must be self-sustaining. But it's leaking power because it's become unstable and so we keep having to top it up, so we just have to find the right maths to correct that imbalance."

He paused in whatever he was doing, and she had a brief glimpse of one eye inspecting her sharply from the darkness beneath the machinery.

"Very good," he said, and there was a genuine recognition in his tone. "iVery/i good."

He went back to work without another word, and she couldn't suppress the little point of warmth which glowed inside her at the compliment.

"Once it's working properly," he continued, his hands not pausing while he spoke, "it should last more or less forever. Long enough, at least, for humanity to gain the technology to take it away and dump it in the Sun. Till then we'll have to get Hazelbrook to find an old mineshaft or something to keep it in."

Angela leaned back against a workbench and folded her arms, finding herself sighing wistfully at the realisation that there was nothing much for her to do. The Doctor, she had to admit, did seem to know what he was doing. He would fix the sphere and this new task, this new career, this new life she had been facing would be over before it had a chance to begin. She wouldn't be working to save the world after all. She would have to see if UNIT would take her back, or if somewhere else in government or private industry might take her. It was good, of course, because the world would be safe. Only a fool or someone utterly selfish would see it otherwise. She sighed again.

"Angela!"

She turned to see Max rushing in, his hair fallen out of place and his eyes startled.

"Where's the Doctor?" he asked.

She pointed at the pair of shoes visible under the computer stack and Max talked to them instead.

"Doctor! That military type, the colonel, he's outside with soldiers. He's demanding we open the doors, he says he's raiding the place!"

The Doctor slid his way out from under the machinery, coatless, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, and looked up at Max sceptically.

"He can't do that. He has no authority."

"He says he has special authority. Something about Geneva calling back and giving him the emergency powers he asked for "

For the first time since Angela had known him, the Doctor looked genuinely nonplussed.

"You're joking."

"He says if we don't open the gates he'll break them down."

The Doctor scrambled to his feet, shaking his sleeves down and reaching for his coat. He glanced back reluctantly at the sphere.

"I'd have preferred to get this finished, but we can't have soldiers clumping about the place. I'd better talk to Stark." 

* * *

Colonel Stark was no longer in his civvies. He was sharply dressed in his uniform, complete with cap and gloves, making him seem taller and somehow harder, as though the starched lines of his military jacket would allow for no doubt or vulnerability. Twelve rifle-bearing UNIT soldiers in camouflage and berets were at his back led by Sergeant Crombie, their two trucks drawn up to the front gate of the perimeter. He was on the verge of losing patience and having the gates broken down when they slid apart and the Doctor's lean, black-coated figure stood alone in the opening.

"Doctor!" exclaimed Stark. "How did you... what's going on in there? Is Doctor Castle safe?"

"Settle down, Colonel," the Doctor said, raising placating hands. "You can send your men home, there's no need for anyone to go charging around waving guns."

The soldiers behind him shifted uncertainly and Stark gave the Doctor a wary look.

"What do you mean? What's happened?"

"I need to get back in there, so I'm not going to bore you with the whole story. Just trust me when I say it's all under control, you can go home or hang around out here if you like, but for pity's sake don't break anything or make any loud bangs of any sort. We have delicate work to do."

He started to turn away, but Stark bellowed after him:

"Stop! What are you talking about, what work? And where's Hazelbrook?"

The Doctor glanced back at him impatiently.

"Hazelbrook is on our side, and the work is to recalibrate a forcefield generator. It's a job for scientists, so please let us get on with it."

He turned his back and stalked quickly through the gate. He had got half a dozen paces before he heard Stark's barked order:

"Hold the gate! And stop that man!"

The Doctor whirled as his arms were seized by a pair of soldiers who thundered up behind him in their heavy boots. Stark advanced pale-faced upon him.

"I would never have believed it," the Colonel said, his voice thin with repressed emotion. "I would never have believed that whatever it is Hazelbrook's doing to people would work on you as well. But this ends here. We'll storm the blockhouse and smash his operation permanently."

"Wait!" the Doctor shouted as the soldiers swarmed past. "You don't know what you're doing. You've got to let me back in there, this is about the future of the human race!"

"Round up all the initiates," Stark commanded, striding away and ignoring him. "Make sure you get Hazelbrook. Switch off any machinery you find."

At the last order the Doctor gave a frenzied twist against the arms of the men restraining him.

"No! Will you listen? You can't do that, you'll kill every living thing on this planet!"

He fought uselessly, and no one was listening.


	13. Chapter 13

The Doctor was hustled into the back of one of the UNIT trucks, Sergeant Crombie shoving him forward and clambering in behind him. He whirled, twitching with energy, up on his toes, and Crombie tensed, ready for an attack.

"All right, Doctor," he said in his heavy voice. "Just settle down, the Colonel will have this sorted out before you know it."

"That's what I'm afraid of," the Doctor snapped back. "Your colonel is going to destroy the world, do you realise that? If they switch off the machines in there..."

"I don't know what they did to you in there," Crombie broke in, "but it's obviously the same thing they did to Doctor Castle. Try and get a grip."

The Doctor frowned at him in vexation, then tucked his chin down onto his chest and leaped lightly forward, striking with two stiffened fingers at a point between Crombie's shoulder and his heart.

The soldier recoiled by a matter of inches and stood there glaring at him suspiciously, unaffected.

"Blast," the Doctor muttered. "I wish I could remember how to do that."

Crombie shoved him in the chest with one thick-knuckled hand, sending him stumbling back to crash down heavily into the heavy equipment stowed at the far end of the truck.

"Now stay there," he rumbled.

The Doctor glared up at him and fished into his pocket, extracting a silver device the size and shape of a ballpoint pen.

"Since you're keeping me prisoner, you might as well confiscate this," he snapped.

"What is it?"

Crombie approached cautiously. The Doctor flipped the gadget over in his palm.

"It's a sonic screwdriver. It's useful mainly for opening things. Like these tear gas canisters for instance."

He clapped one hand over his mouth and nose and squeezed his eyes shut while with the other hand he touched the sonic screwdriver to the lid of a securely locked metal case. It sprang open like a toy and the grenades within spewed out great gouts of choking yellow gas.

* * *

Inside the Sanctum, Angela stood tensely and listened to the sound of metal slamming against metal reverberating around the great concrete chamber. Hazelbrook, his hair in greater than disarray than ever and his moustache drooping where he had chewed at it, hurried down the steps to join her.

"The front door won't last long," he fretted. "I'm going to have to let them in. Perhaps if we just put up our hands we can keep them from breaking anything or switching anything off."

"Maybe," said Angela grimly. "But I don't think the Colonel's in a mood to be reasoned with. You made him pretty angry."

Hazelbrook huffed out a nervous breath and ruffled his hand through his hair. Then the phone rang on the desk.

They exchanged glances. Slowly, as though half suspecting it might bite, Hazelbrook lifted the receiver.

"Ah... hello?"

He listened for a few moments and then proffered the handset to Angela.

"It's for you."

"For... me?"

"Angela " came a familiar sharp voice, tinnily reproduced by the phone. "Are you there?"

"Doctor?" She grabbed it and turned away to face the sphere at the centre of the room. "Where are you? I thought you were going to talk the Colonel out of this."

"Slight change of plan. I think the Colonel has had one too many people telling him about all the good work the Sanctum does. Now listen, he has his heart set on smashing or deactivating every piece of equipment in there. You've got to stop him."

"Me?" Angela gestured helplessly as though he could see her. "What can I do?"

"Well, I can't do anything, I'm stuck out here and there are soldiers all round the building. Fortunately you do have one very powerful weapon at your disposal."

Angela opened her mouth to demand to know what he was talking about, but the sense that she already knew was gathering around her like a thundercloud. Tentatively, more from reluctance to voice it than from doubt that she was right, she asked:

"You're... you're not talking about the sphere?"

"Set the forcefield on low power for a minute or two. Phantoms will come pouring out. You'll send the soldiers running for their lives."

"Terrific. What about us?"

"You'll be frightened too, but you have to hold it together, because you have to bring the forcefield back up again before the thing inside can break free entirely."

"I..." Vividly, the experience of facing a single phantom flashed across her memory, all the pain, all the fear and humiliation and despair she had ever experienced concentrated into one moment and played out over and over again. "I can't do it, Doctor. There's no way. I can't work a computer while..."

"Angela." The sharp impatience in the Doctor's voice was enough to silence her. "I'm not going to give you a long speech about the faith I have in you. I'm going to give you a short speech about how if you don't do this we are all going to die, closely followed by the rest of the human race."

She was silent, her mind roaring with objections that this was too hard, that it was too much to ask, that she couldn't do it. The knowledge that she had no choice standing like a wall against them.

"All right, Doctor," she said heavily. "I'll try."

"Oh, you'll try," came his arch voice down the line. "Well, that's all anyone could ask. As long as you've done your level best and made an honest effort, the extinction of all life on Earth won't really count, will it?"

"Oh, shut up, Doctor," she snapped. "I'll do it, all right? You'd better get ready, you're not immune to those things either, remember?"

"Fine. Just try to bear in mind, whatever it shows you, it's not real. Things that happened in the past can't hurt you. You survived them when they actually happened, you can certainly survive watching a slideshow of them."

Angela sighed, closing her eyes as the things she had seen the last time reared up anew in her memory.

"Right," she said. "Here we go, then."

She set the receiver down on the desk and hunched over a computer terminal. She knew how to do this, in the short time she had been working in the Sanctum she had already familiarised herself with the details of the sphere's power supply. Switching it down to its lowest level would let the forcefield fail little by little through the leakage of its energy cycle. Leave it off too long and it would fail altogether. She tapped out the commands and failsafes one by one on the screen. Her finger hovered over the Return key.

"Time is a factor," came an impatient voice from the phone. He really was an annoying man.

Angela closed her eyes and smacked a finger down firmly on the key.


	14. Chapter 14

With a piercing clang the soldiers at the front entrance drove crowbars hard into the doorframe, twisting the metal and cracking the cement. A growl of approval went up as the entire door swung sideways off a single remaining hinge, hanging drunkenly in the frame and opening the way into the Sanctum.

Rifles were gripped tighter. They had been told that resistance was unlikely but possible, and that no one really knew what they would find when they penetrated the building. Their eyes, accustomed to the daylight, peered dully into the gloomy interior. The swimming shapes which rippled across the floor towards them either passed unnoticed or were dismissed as a trick of the half-light.

* * *

The Doctor knelt uneasily on the grass outside the main gate, Crombie sitting alongside him with his nose still running and his eyes streaming, blinking furiously and dabbing at his eyes with the Doctor's handkerchief. They both lifted their heads sharply at the piercing scream which rang out across the enclosure, the broken, desperate howl of a man locked away with a million nightmares clawing at his mind.

"What was that?" asked Crombie, straining to see through his pink, smarting eyes.

The Doctor pushed himself up onto his feet and straightened his coat.

"Would you believe that's the sound of my plan working perfectly? Now that's a scary thought." He gave Crombie an absent-minded pat on the shoulder. "Stay out of trouble, Sergeant."

His long, lean figure ran lightly through the gates and then slowed as he approached the carnage around the front door. Except for the lack of blood, the scene was as though a bomb had exploded. Men writhed on the ground, hands clutching at the gravel beneath them or at the air, their faces twisted in agony, their eyes wide, staring circles or squeezed tightly shut. Many were weeping, some were kicking at things that weren't there, others cried out; to their mothers, to friends, lovers and enemies, pleading for help, for forgiveness, for comfort.

The Doctor averted his eyes, knowing that there was nothing he could do for them while the forcefield remained deactivated. His lips thinned to see that the shimmering mist was still flowing unabated from the open doorway, swirling out onto the gravel, half submerging the struggling soldiers and spreading out like a living, growing thing across the grass.

"Come on Angela," he muttered. "Don't do this to me."

He hesitated, indecisive for a few moments longer, shuffling back to keep his feet clear of the ever-expanding swirl of grey cloud, then he sucked in a deep breath and glared across at the open doorway as though at an enemy.

"All right, all right. I get the message."

He licked his lips, knotted his fists, and poised himself like a distance runner waiting for the starting pistol.

"Come on, Doctor, you're supposed to be a Time Lord. You can do this. It's just pictures. Nothing but old memories. Can memories hurt you? No. No more than they already do, anyway. So let's get this over with."

He didn't move straight away, but swallowed, his pale face looking, if anything, paler than ever, before he clenched his teeth and plunged into the cloud, through the door into the interior of the Sanctum.

* * *

Down on the Sanctum floor, Angela clutched at her hair, gasped for breath and stared at the things that loomed up in her vision, the small voice yelling at her that they weren't really there becoming fainter with each passing moment. Scientific fact fled from her and she knew they were real. The leering faces, the mocking voices drumming it into her that she was and always would be a blonde girl with big blue eyes and sweetly kissable lips. Born to look pretty and keep her mouth shut. The science, the career, the ambition, all just childish contrariness, a pointless and futile attempt to run from her calling in life. She clapped her hands over her ears and tried to shout back, to drown them out, but her voice was so soft and weak. They closed in on her from all sides, laughing at her for her failure, telling her they knew all along she would be no good.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She said it to all the people she had disappointed and let down. Her parents who had wanted nothing more than that she should find a nice man, settle down and produce grandchildren. Her teachers who had been dismayed when she had joined a military organisation dedicated to the pursuit of the paranormal. Colonel Stark who had treated her with respect and whom she had first failed and then abandoned. The Doctor...

The Doctor who had trusted her to do this, and who hadn't cared how she looked. As though he was standing in front of her, she saw his thin, hard, intense face and heard his quiet, sharp voice telling her... something or other about mistakes, with the assurance of someone who knew first-hand what he was talking about. His chilly, unsympathetic figure was like an iron post in the storm of her nightmares, something to grasp onto and steady herself. The keyboard was right there, she realised, she just needed to press the Return key to enter the line of code she had already typed in, and the task he had given her would be done. For the Doctor. Because he'd trusted her. Slowly, feeling her way with her fingertips, moving as though for the first time in a month, she stretched out her arm and tapped the key.

* * *

For the Doctor, making his way one deliberate step at a time along the corridor with his arms spread out to the sides to feel his way, his face taut and drained of blood, staring fixedly into the distance, it was a few minutes before he became conscious that the intensity of what he had been experiencing was starting to lessen. It was like the sound of screaming becoming slowly quieter, the pain still there but the relief incalculable at its gradual withdrawal. He sagged against one wall of the passage, his legs half buckling beneath him, and allowed himself a crooked little smile.

"Angela. Thank you."

He allowed himself a few seconds' rest, eyes closed, his lean frame draped loosely against the wall before shaking his head briskly and drawing himself up straight. The mist thinned about his feet till it was mere wisps and his stride grew more certain with every pace he took. Then something lurched from a side passage and the Doctor's collar was yanked sideways, sending him staggering into the far wall.

"What did you do? What did you do to my men?"

The Doctor regained his balance and looked up tensely at Colonel Stark's deathly white face and red-rimmed eyes, his face haggard and mouth gaping, the pistol in his hand shaking but levelled firmly enough to kill. He straightened carefully, making no sudden movement which might cause a tight-strung trigger finger to snap shut, his eyes not leaving Stark's face.

"I have to congratulate you on getting this far, Colonel," he said. "None of your men even got through the front door."

"Switch it off!" Stark snarled. "Whatever's doing this, switch it off!"

"It is off," said the Doctor patiently. "Surely you noticed, or did you just think your force of will had overwhelmed it?"

Stark merely bared his teeth like an animal and grabbed him by the collar again, shoving him on down the corridor, the gun trembling in his fist all the while.

* * *

Angela sat on the floor by the computer terminal, every muscle limp, her head hanging down and her hair tumbling forward over her face. Dimly she was aware of Hazelbrook, his hair in chaos and his moustache a drooping mess, picking himself up off the floor and of the technicians slowly returning to some form of self-possession, dumbly seeking out their friends to check that they had survived unhurt.

"That was... that was..."

Hazelbrook groped dazedly for words and then abandoned the attempt, shaking his head and staring bleakly at the floor. Angela nodded.

"Yes. I know."

Stiffly, as though she had forgotten how and was remembering the movements one muscle at a time, she started to climb to her feet. She leaned on the desk and then with a gasp her head snapped upright.

Stark stood not ten feet from her, the gun wavering in his hand, the Doctor standing sullenly with one arm in the Colonel's grip.

"Switch off these machines," Stark ordered.

Angela held up her hands placatingly and spoke as though to a child about to do something dangerous.

"Colonel, we can't do that..."

"Switch them off!" he bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth, his gun arm straightening to full length. "Switch them off or I shoot!"


	15. Chapter 15

The stillness in the chamber was like something thick and tangible in the air. Stark's swaying, ashen-faced figure stood in the doorway, glaring wild-eyed from whatever nightmares the phantoms had played into his mind. Hazelbrook, the technicians, stood frozen, their eyes fixed on the gun. The Doctor, his arm gripped in Stark's fist, stood frowning at the floor, apparently pondering the possible solutions without much success.

Angela took a careful step forward, her hands held up where he could see them, fingers spread.

"Colonel, please listen. Things aren't as they seem. We're not creating those gas creatures you saw, we're trying to keep them contained..."

"That's enough!" Stark barked out, jabbing the gun in her direction. "I won't listen to any more lies. You scientists, I've been patient and I've taken your advice and look what's happened. You killed my men."

"Your men aren't..."

"Quiet!" He seemed to draw himself into himself and recover a measure of self control. "I'm not going to argue with you, Doctor Castle. Switch off that machine immediately or I'll do it my way and start shooting holes in it."

"If you do that," the Doctor spoke up, acid dripping from his tone, "you will doom the entire human race to a long-drawn out and horrifying death. Is that really what you want written in your obituary?"

That wasn't going to change Stark's mind, but at least it distracted him. He tugged at the Doctor's arm, pulling him off balance, and his lips drew back from his teeth as he pressed the gun into his ear. Angela cast about for an idea and the only one she could think of was a very, very foolish one. There was a time when she would have dismissed it without a thought and tried to think of something more sensible, but this was not that time.

"Colonel..." Her face glowing with sincerity, she spread her arms wider and moved step by step towards him. "I'm sorry, I really am. I know I've not been the scientific advisor I should have been. I've let you down, I've been misled by other people when I should have known better. I should have listened to you, but you confuse me, you always have. You wouldn't have realised because you never really even looked on me as a woman, sometimes I felt you barely knew I existed. The truth is... I love you."

Stark's jaw sagged open, his already confused eyes widening to incredulous circles.

"What?"

She widened her eyes piteously and continued her advance.

"It's true. Oh, Colonel, I should have told you this long ago, but I was so afraid."

She closed with him, running her left hand up the arm which held the gun while her right snaked up to his neck and ran caressingly over his cheek. Stark's face twisted from one expression to another, disbelief, horror, embarrassment and anger all tumbling over one another in quick succession. He wasn't buying it of course, not really. But for the time it took his scattered wits to gather enough self-possession to push her away, he was pointing the gun at no one.

The Doctor's bony fist smacked hard into Stark's chin, sending him reeling drunkenly away to crash down amongst a stack of electrical spares.

"Owwww "

The Doctor tucked his hand into his armpit and sucked his breath in through his teeth as though he had struck his thumb with a hammer. Angela rolled her eyes.

"Oh, pull yourself together, Doctor."

He glared at her resentfully.

"Next time you can do the punching part and we'll see how you like it."

He glanced down at Stark's crumpled form and kicked the gun away under a cabinet. He looked back at her accusingly.

"Did you just use feminine wiles on him?"

She shrugged.

"If you can call that wily."

* * *

Two technicians were enlisted to haul Stark's unconscious body out of the Sanctum and abandon him on the gravel outside. The soldiers were recovering, but had no fight in them, and were sitting scattered around the grass with heads bowed, replaying in their minds the experience they had just suffered. Only Crombie, his eyes still pink from the tear gas, was on his feet and hurried to his officer's aid.

"He'll be fine," the Doctor advised him. "But you lot had better push off. Remember, what we just made happen, we can make happen again."

Crombie eyed him warily but without real hostility. He nodded slowly.

"We'll go, Doctor."

He gave Angela a little nod of acknowledgement and turned to begin rounding up the men. His powerful voice was lowered to a gentle rumble to steady their shattered nerves and bring them back to reality.

"They're not going to be gone for long," Angela said as she walked back into the building at the Doctor's shoulder. "I know Colonel Stark. He'll wait as long as it takes to get ready and then he'll be back."

The Doctor nodded.

"I know. But I think I may have that covered. I had time for another call after I phoned you."

* * *

The following morning, Angela's prediction was proven accurate. It had taken that long to have full chemical warfare suits sent from Porton Down and Stark and his men were fully kitted out like astronauts as they approached the Sanctum main entrance for the second time.

"On my mark, follow me straight in," came Stark's voice, cracking and spitting over the helmet radios. "I'll lead the way to the heart of the Sanctum. Once you're there, smash everything that looks as if it's powered, especially the large glass ball at the centre of the room. Avoid human casualties if possible but not at risk to yourselves.

"One moment, Colonel."

The voice which cut across them was a deep, strong sound, not loud but rich with the easy confidence of a voice which is habitually obeyed.

All the soldiers wheeled to find themselves confronted by a heavyset old man, wrapped up warm in a thick brown overcoat, a lean junior officer in dress uniform his only companion. Aged, watery eyes inspected them steadily. One pink-mottled hand clutched the head of a walking stick, the other stroked the remaining thin white whiskers of a sharply clipped military moustache. His shoulders seemed bowed beneath the weight of his large, grizzled head, but his feet were planted squarely on the ground.

Stark bolted to attention, more as though someone had slapped him into that pose than as if by his own decision. His eyes started wide with surprise.

"General!"


	16. Chapter 16

The old man made a stiff and awkward progress towards the Sanctum entrance, each step a matter of careful concentration, supported by his stick, but the soldiers fell back instinctively to clear his path. He was met by the Doctor's and Angela's faces peering cautiously around the broken remains of the steel front door. Her eyes widened, her mouth forming a circle in recognition.

"That... that's..."

She pointed feebly at the heavily built figure advancing towards her. The Doctor paid no attention. He slipped past her out into the open air, and the old man's weariness seemed to drop away, his face suffused by a warm smile of instant recognition. His rich, deep voice rolled out:

"Doctor."

His outstretched hand was seized and the Doctor's hard, thin face relaxed for just a few seconds into honest, unvarnished pleasure and affection.

"Brigadier."

"That's General," the old man's uniformed aide corrected him officiously. Lethbridge-Stewart waved the man placidly to silence, his smiling gaze never leaving the Doctor's face.

"I have a feeling, Sandford," he said, "that in certain circles I shall always be the Brigadier."

He relinquished his grasp of the Doctor's hand and looked him up and down appraisingly. With a lifting of bushy grey eyebrows and a twinkling of dark brown eyes he delivered his verdict.

"You look awful, Doctor."

"Thank you," said the Doctor drily. "You look... well fed."

The Brigadier chuckled and for a few moments the two of them stood, surrounded by the uncertain soldiers and watched by the nervous Sanctum initiates, in the silence which their long friendship allowed them. The Brigadier at length roused himself to speak.

"In trouble as usual, Doctor? I really can't leave you alone for a minute, can I?"

Prodded into action, Stark stepped smartly forward and threw a stiff salute.

"General. This man is in league with Hazelbrook and his cult. We were about to raid the premises."

The Brigadier gave him a condescending look, his eyes running over the bulky chemical warfare suit and thick glass faceplate.

"Oh, take off that ridiculous get-up, man. Have some self-respect."

Leaving Stark dismayed behind them, the Doctor drew the Brigadier aside with a hand on his upper arm and spoke quietly and seriously.

"I do need to talk to you about the clear-up here. Hazelbrook's father had a point, this isn't something to be entrusted to any national government. Can you get the UN to organise safe long-term storage of a dangerous item?"

"Yes, yes," the Brigadier promised breezily. "Why don't you show me what's been the cause of all this trouble?"

Angela stepped aside in the doorway to let them past. The old soldier's eyes lit upon her and for an instant he looked thoughtful, then his face cleared.

"Ah. Doctor Castle, isn't it?"

"Yes!" she said, startled, hardly able to believe that he had recognised her from a single meeting years ago when she had had glasses and different hair.

He nodded approvingly.

"Glad you're still with us."

* * *

Crombie and the other men had accepted with enthusiasm the idea that there would be no fight at the Sanctum today. Stark had been first resentful, then embarrassed when he started to grasp the reality of the situation, and had at last accepted his mistake with good grace. The wheels were soon in motion to remove the sphere, its forcefield fully repaired and its lethal occupant sealed inside, to be buried at a UN deep storage facility in Norway, never to see the light of day.

By evening, they were all in the pub.

In the flickering golden light of a real fire, in amongst the brick pillars, the old wooden beams and gleaming brasswork, the Brigadier held court telling story after unlikely story, the soldiers and the sanctum staff mingled around him. Hazelbrook, Stark and Crombie all joined in with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Cheeks became flushed with drink, warmth and good feeling. Voices rose in talk and laughter. Like an unseen shadow, two steps outside the circle and facing out towards the dark, the Doctor leaned back against a pillar and winced to hear the Brigadier gathering steam in his account of yet another tale of the good old days.

"HAI!"

He started as Angela, her eyes agleam with laughter ambushed him in mock-karate pose. She had changed back into her sensible skirt and blouse, and pinned her hair back, but the glasses seemed to be gone for good.

"Et tu, Angela," he said with a sour look. She laughed and leaned against the pillar alongside him.

"Did you really have a souped-up vintage car called Bessie?"

He pushed himself away from the pillar and pulled his collar up around his throat.

"I don't recall."

She watched curiously as with a slightly furtive glance back at the merry gathering in the centre of the room, he headed for the exit. In the comfort of the moment, it took her long seconds to grasp what he was, against all reason, about to do. With an urgent jolt, she hastened after him to confront him accusingly at the door.

"You're not leaving? Without even saying goodbye?"

The Doctor glanced back at the Brigadier, his warm voice booming across the room, surrounded by his laughing audience, and his face softened, but only for a moment.

"The Brig will understand."

He slipped through the door and she followed him out into the cool evening air.

"I was wrong about you," she said, making him stop after one pace along the pavement outside. "You saved the world."

The Doctor turned to face her, his narrow, cold face standing out against the dark of the night.

"So did you. If you died tomorrow, your life would still have been worthwhile a billion times over. Feels good doesn't it?"

He turned away and left her standing there, the warmth and light and noise of the pub at her back, watching him receding down the road, his footsteps clicking on tarmac black and slick from a light rain.

"Doctor, wait."

He only half turned, his features caught starkly in the glow of a streetlamp.

"What on Earth for?"

She hesitated, but the words tumbled out of their own accord.

"You really have a time machine?"

She was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.

"Oh, yes. It's very nice."

Angela let the pub door swing shut behind her and approached him warily, one step at a time.

"It's all true, isn't it? All the stories. The aliens, the monsters, the mad computers."

He nodded solemnly.

"All except the one about the garden gnomes. I don't know where that came from."

She felt her heart thudding faster and her stomach tighten, and she swallowed quickly before speaking.

"Can I... come with you?"

He eyed her closely, his expression not changing in the slightest, letting second after thoughtful second tick past before answering:

"Yes, all right."

Angela felt her blood run lightly through her veins in mingled relief and horror at what she was doing. The Doctor gave her a disapproving look as she hurried to his side.

"What about your job at UNIT?"

She shrugged.

"I resigned, remember? Anyway, you have a time machine. You can get me back tomorrow morning so I can re-apply, right?"

"Oh, yes." He turned and started off down the road again. "With luck."

She matched him step for step, walking at his shoulder.

"Can we go to Metebelis III?"

He gave her a sidelong look.

"What do you know about Metebelis III?"

"Nothing, I saw it mentioned in the file. Pretty name."

"It's not as nice as it sounds."

"Can we go to the fifteenth century?"

"Why?"

"I want to meet Dracula."

"We'll see."

"Can we..."

The Doctor sighed and shook his head, but as they walked in the dark and he thought he couldn't be seen, he allowed a smile to linger briefly on his lips.

* * *

From the pub window, the Brigadier watched them go, and his kindly old eyes held the indulgent affection of an adult for children at play. His melancholy gathered as they dwindled into the distance, because he knew that this would be the last time. Nothing, now, but joyous memories and a thousand unlikely tales. It had been wonderful, but his eyes glistened and his voice creaked with regret as he made his quiet farewell.

"Goodbye, Doctor."

**END**


End file.
